This Is Not a Cover Letter

Traditional corporate etiquette would have me boast about my own best qualities. I would describe my greatest strengths and how they would fit in with your team and culture based on a cursory scan of your website’s About page. If I couldn’t be bothered even to try, I’d have AI pick my strengths for me.

I won’t be doing that here.

Instead, I’ll share my overall view on design as it stands. Abridged, of course, and without the limitations of asking a machine (one that processes language merely as a set of rules, not as a means of human connection) to do it for me.

I hope, and believe, this will be much more insightful for you than the typical fodder that society and corporate rituals require us to use to cover our true intentions.

Design is mainly a skill of uncovering what to say no to. Over the last half-decade, I’ve spent most of my time learning which problems aren’t the right ones to solve. Which solutions aren’t the right ones to build. Which outcomes aren’t the right ones to shoot for. Which requests or commands aren’t the right ones to follow. I’ve zealously advocated for the people we like to call “users,” and lost rapport and influence with some of my team because it was inconvenient for them.

Other times, perhaps jaded or defeated, I’ve given in to leadership’s or others’ good (or sometimes malicious) intentions and built things my team and I believed wouldn’t work.

One of our greatest shared qualities is our incessant, sometimes annoying, ability to adapt to sub-optimal circumstances. That ancient survival instinct. The one in recent history that has evolved into sayings like it is what it is, and that’s crazy! My favorite of these, unsarcastically, is: you’ll think of something.

I’ve used AI as a tool in some roles. In others, I have not.

I’ve led cross-functional delivery teams from a product trio, and I’ve been the only designer for entire organizations.

I’ve been the specialist, and I’ve been the generalist.

I’ve been an accelerator and a detractor.

I’ve met outcomes and still failed. I’ve failed to meet outcomes and still succeeded.

What I’ve discovered so far is that it always seems to work itself out. Our decisions matter, of course, but in the end we are more than the sum of what we do. Our effect on the world through the products and experiences we build follows that same pattern. They take on a meaning larger than the sum of their parts. More than the features we plan. More than just the colors we use. More than the micro-copy and the micro-interactions. Beyond the visual rhythm of views and hierarchy of components. Transcendent even, above the information architecture and user flows we map like cartographers. At the end of the day, these experiences, be they interfaces, journeys, campaigns, systems, or products that we design, are largely a construct of the amalgamated sentiment of the good people who use them. We can nudge and direct these people toward positive or negative sentiments to some degree. Using psychology, we can make the “right” or “profitable” paths easier, and the “wrong” or “sad” paths harder. We can change how people view the world around them through tweaking their perspective of the digital world that helps define it.

If we only see people as users and users as profit, then we’ve missed the mark.

These interfaces and experiences that we build should have a primary goal of connecting with people who will benefit from them the most. Profit and growth, to the extent that it is required to continue providing that benefit, becomes a side-effect. The object of good design is connection.

Let’s shift the current direction of applied design. What if our measure of success was more than monetary? People who design could stop obsessing over conversion rates, product metrics, and market share. They can stop substituting individuals with percentages on a dashboard. We can stop boiling all these people down to math problems to be solved.

We can tap into and join that authentic sentiment and actually connect with those we serve. Releasing this white-knuckled grip on the goal of unbridled success allows us makers to make the internet novel and authentic again.

People are people and we can help them.

Or they’re users and we can use them.